This isn't Eva and Ellie's first trip to the ranch, and like the last, it's an overnight event. It's only reasonable, after all: it's a two-hour trip up from Denver, and staying only the afternoon would mean about as much time on the road as at the ranch.
So now it's sundown. The day is over, the horses -- because of course there were horses and horseback riding and expeditions to that gully in the north of his land where a little winter snow still lingered -- are put away, Ellie's hands and face are washed and the lights are on in the house and out on the large deck, Calden is firing up the stove to grill burgers and steaks.
It's warm enough these days that outdoor barbecues are not entirely absurd, though they'll still eat inside later. It's warm enough that he makes do with a thick-stuffed vest over the same flannel shirt he took them riding in, his bootheels still traildusted. Eva's younger children aren't here tonight, and neither is her mother-in-law.
It hasn't entirely escaped Calden's notice that Ellie gets just a little more of her mother's time and attention. Maybe it's because she's the oldest. Maybe it's because she's the only girl. Maybe it's because of the three children, wildness burns most strongly in her, and there is a phantom window of opportunity that narrows with every passing year. Month. Week. Maybe it's because she had a different father than the others, and though all three children have now lost their father, Ellie never knew hers in the first place. Never knew his family; does not have a grandmother to shadow her.
It's fair, Calden thinks, turning steaks over on the fire. It's only fair that she gets special treatment from time to time. A nice little mom-and-me weekend at a friend's ranch,
with real horses and real cowboys.
ÉvaEllie has done than merely wash her face-and-hands since returning from trail riding; she was sent to take a bath or a shower immediately on returning and told that she could put on her PJs or the dress she insisted on packing when she packed the Trunkee she has had since she was four, and which she is a little bit too big to ride on now, but which she still prefers over anything so mundane as a suitcase.
She's still downstairs (?), in the guest suite turned over to mother-and-daughter, where they can curl up together almost like a sleepover, while Éva lingers on the deck, a glass of red wine in hand, as Calden sears the steaks. Perhaps there was prep work in the kitchen to which she contributed - chopping greens and fresh vegetables for a salad, dressing it lightly in lemon juice and olive oil - or trimming the slender stalks of early-season asparagus shipped up from Mexico, yes, but so much like spring that it is impossible to resist when one sees it in the grocery story for a quick, flashing sautee.
Now, though: the table is set and the vegetables are ready to go and there must be a fire laid in the great fireplace and the two kinfolk are outside. Éva with a glass of wine in hand, and a dark leather blazer over jeans and a clean blouse, crisp in black and white.
"She insisted on packing a dress," Éva is telling Calden. "Bet you a dollar to five that she shows up wearing it and her cowboy boots. And calls her milk white wine and demands it from a stem glass."
A glance at the horizon, the last threads of daylight still barely visible, the warm light thrown out from the interior thrown out across the wooden decking. The scent of the steaks rich in the bright cold air.
Calden"I am not," Calden says, quirking a wry grin over his shoulder, "going to bet against a mother about what her daughter is or isn't going to do. But I will say that's just about the cutest thing I've ever heard. I'll make sure to get her a proper glass for her white wine."
A drop of melted fat sizzles as a small orange tongue of fire darts upward to lick it from the steaks. Calden nudges the beef absently, testingly, then moves on to flip the burger patties.
"So how's life down in the big city?"
Éva"That's where you got it wrong. Technically she's a pre adolescent, which means I am going to get virtually everything wrong. You should always take that bet."
Éva breathes out a laugh over the mouth of her wine glass. Shoots Calden a bright glance, which is illuminated but not sparking. This wry edge to the shape of her mouth.
"It's been quiet. Which is rather a relief after the summer and fall. I've been traveling a bit for work, too. Which sometimes takes me to the strangest places. What about you? Heard anymore from that Hawkes girl?"
Calden"Oh boy," Calden huffs, wry humor now a thin veneer over genuine annoyance. "Have I. I think on some bizarre level she means well, though. Thinks she's setting wrongs right, preventing disasters. Something of the sort.
"I'm sure you've had similar experiences of your own. Got any tips?"
Éva"Actually, I haven't," another quiet breath, quiet and warm enough that it makes ripples in the surface of her wine. "Perhaps it's a tribal privilege. Maybe it's my inclination toward a particular kind of discretion. But no: well-meaning busybodies have not tried to save me from myself.
"And I'm not sure I would tolerate it if they did."
tenderfootOutside, they both hear it: the sound of a truck's engine, the kick of gravel and dirt grinding up into the air from wheels turning rapidly onto the drive. Whoever is driving up, they're driving fast, and Calden knows the particular roar of that vehicle just before it cuts.
They turn and look, they go to the railing, and he sees ranch hands who should be out handling the ranch and watching over the cattle tonight coming up the drive to the house like the Devil itself is behind them. Which may make Eva and Calden both, given their experiences, look for that very Devil.
No devil to be seen. Just Jimmy and Paul, one in the driver's seat and one in the bed, and Jimmy positively leaping out of the cab to run around back to the bed where Paul is hunkered down. Ian must still be with the herd. But Paul is waving Jimmy off; they're talking but where they are, the wind is catching everything and making it hard to hear. That wind that keeps picking up, stronger than before. Good thing they're planning on eating inside. Jimmy starts running from the truck to the house. Not jogging.
Running.
He's going for a door, not seeing Calden and Eva up there, his eyes wild with a strange form of panic.
Calden"Well, at this point I think I'm just going to remove myself from any conversation with Miss Hawkes that seems to be going that way," Calden says. "But enough about that subject. How's your mother-in-law? I seem to recall -- "
that's when the truck pulls up. The truck containing Jimmy and Paul but not Ian, slashing up onto the drive and rocking to a stop. Calden pauses, mid-sentence, mid-steaksearing, frowning. When his cousins start running for a door, he puts his barbecue tongs down. He kills the fire on the grill, lowers the lid, and -- with a jerk of his head indicating that Eva should come with -- heads for the large glass sliding doors into the house.
Éva(Likelihood that Eva came to dinner armed. 1 in 10.)
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
tenderfootPaul stays in the bed of the truck, hunched over, his arms straight down but his back curved. He's not wearing his hat, and his hair is sticking up in multiple directions, blown by the wind. Jimmy is going full throttle, meaning that he's storming up the stairs when Calden and Eva come in from the terrace, his mouth open to shout for Calden, for Calden's dad, anyone. The blood is drained from his face,
and there's blood all over his shirt. Thank god Ellie didn't see him. Did Ellie see him?
He's the youngest of the ranch hands, the cousins that babysit Calden's herd. And he's shaken. Not shaking, but he's not okay. And with that, he doesn't know where to begin, except by blurting out:
"We shot her."
CaldenIt's absurd, completely illogical, but Calden's first thought is
a night in April. A wolf in white.
"Who?"
ÉvaThe Shadow Lord is favoring Calden with a look of wry agreement and has her back to the drive when the truck comes tearing up. She's sipping her wine with the ebb and flow of the conversation, certainly intending to drink more than the glass or two she might ordinarily allow herself, but no more than three or perhaps four. Enough to become pleasantly inebrieted; to let down her ever present guard. Perhaps even to laugh, openly and without that particular edge of wry self-awareness that cuts into every evidence of her humor.
The look over her shoulder is brief; spare. She expects to see nothing more than a pick-up truck on a graveled drive. She doesn't know the rhythms of the ranch or the expected speeds or the needs of the stock or any of it. The sweep of headlights cutting through the darkness, and -
Éva breathes out a curse. While Calden is putting down the tongs and shutting the lid of the barbecue she is setting down her wine glass on the railing and easing a nine millimeter from her shoulder holster and scanning the driveway behind the truck, holding the weapon with a keen and steady hand.
Nothing. Just the men, running, which catches her heart all sharp beneath her sternum and sends her into motion, quick toward the glass door and inside -
"You shot whom?"
Calden and Eva speak quite nearly at the same time.
The muzzle of the weapon nine millimeter is pointed toward the ground. Inside, she has thumbed the safety back on and but for the answer to that question Éva is ready to circle the kinsmen and head downstairs to find her fucking daughter.
tenderfoot"I don't know," Jimmy says, choking on the words, not even noticing Eva's firearm yet. "I swear, Calden, we thought it was a coyote going after the cattle like usual, she wasn't so big --"
He pants, gripping the railing of the stairs. "Shot her three times and she just ran at us like it was nothing, and so we kept shooting til she dropped. That's when she changed. It's just a kid, Calden, she's a kid."
ÉvaNow at the top of the stairs, really a step or two down - holding that gun at a loose remove, though not carelessly - Éva gives Jimmy a glancing blow of a look. Asks:
"Is she in the truck?"
Calden"Oh, god." Calden's hands just find their way to his head, clasping atop his crown as though to keep the top of his skull from flying off as the words sink in. "Oh, my god. Where -- "
Eva asks. Calden backs it up with a look: piercing, questioning. Is she?
tenderfootJimmy just nods, panting a breath out. "She hasn't moved. She went down and then twitched a little and changed in front of us, didn't get up."
Calden"Well," he's starting across the broad spaces of the great room now, around that rather grand staircase, past the formal dining table and toward the front door, "is she still alive? Christ."
ÉvaÉva is quiet long enough for Jimmy to answer Calden. She just listens, then gives him a rather spiked look. While Calden heads for the front door, she herself is starting down the staircase up which Jimmy just came running. Her daughter, after all, is downstairs.
"I'm going to talk to Ellie. Where - " this is clearly directed at Calden's back. Her voice is rising to carry in the greatroom. "are you going?"
tenderfootThey're heading out. Jimmy is following, feeling safer now: Calden is in his mid-thirties, Calden and Eva are adults who handle things like this far more often than the cousins do, it's going to be okay. He's calming a bit, now that he has questions to answer and things to say that make sense outside of his head.
"Paul said she is. She's --"
Someone outside yells. It's got to be Paul, it's a man shouting. Then thuds as he hits the ground. They can't see him but he's tucking into a roll as he flies out of the bed of the truck.
Calden"Out," Calden answers Eva, which in the grand scheme of things is rather self-evident. "You," he drops a hand on Jimmy's shoulder as the young man starts to follow, "go downstairs. Stay with Eva's daughter. Keep her inside."
The front door is still yawing on its hinges. Calden pulls it open wide and steps out -- just in time to see Paul go sailing. Biting back a curse, Calden picks up his pace and runs for the cab of the truck,
and the rifle racked across the roof. Just in case.
ÉvaThe Shadow Lord sets her jaw; she is three or four steps down the stairs when Calden declares that he is going out and there's a stubborn set to her jaw as he does that. This time whatever curse she mutters is almost wholly non-verbal. Not even sotto voce, just evident in the spasm of her jaw.
"Take off your shirt," to Paul, who is bloodied, and now she's coming back up the stairs. One and then two steps. Her dark eyes cut over the ranchhand with a rather critical though dispassionate survey. "Tell her that I sent you. Lock the doors. Tell her there's something dangerous outside and she has to obey you and she has to be ready to run.
"Tell her to remember the code."
Another two steps up and Éva is in the great room once again. Calden pulls open the front door and Éva follows at a clipped pace behind. She does not see Paul go sailing but she does hear him and so she thumbs off the safety as she goes.
tenderfootJimmy balks. "I've got --" he gestures at his bloodied flannel shirt. He knows Eva's daughter Ellie. She's a kid, too. She's a little kid who doesn't want pink boots. Eva tells him to take it off. Well: she is a Shadow Lord. He just nods, yanking it open because his fingers are fumbling with the buttons. He starts heading downstairs. His undershirt is soaked through; he takes that off as well, trying to remember everything Eva says.
Your mom sent me. I'm going to lock the doors. There's something dangerous outside, and your mom said you have to obey me and be ready to run and... remember the code?
Outside, Paul hits the earth, arms up to cover his head. There's even more blood on his shirt, on his sleeves, but it's not his, just like Jimmy's shirt isn't covered in his own blood. It's coming from that girl, that girl who is now not a girl at all, climbing over the edge of the truck-bed as Calden is running to his own, grabbing the rifle.
She's in glabro already, but she's not very large. She's only about five and a half feet tall in this form, her hair lank and dark and bloodstained, her eyes glowing golden, fur sprouting on her arms and claws and body and face that is reddish-grey. She's growing larger though as she digs her hands into the truck's side, denting it, pushing into crinos. The gunshot wounds she's suffered already are closing, healing, despite the blood she unleashed all over Calden's cousins.
Jimmy has run downstairs to Ellie. Calden is outside near his truck with his rifle. Eva is outside the house with her handgun.
She's just about the smallest war-formed monster they've ever seen. She's only just head and shoulders above Calden's height when she drops to the ground, eyes twitching between them, teeth bared in a snarl of warning.
Calden"HEY."
Calden has a rifle in hand. The driver's door of his truck is open; the bed of the truck is between him and the small -- if such a word could ever be used for such a thing -- Crinos. He is not pointing the gun at her, though he does have it ready, the safety off, a round chambered.
"Calm down. It's all right. We made a mistake. We don't want to hurt you."
ÉvaThere is only so much a gun can do against a Crinos. How very well Éva remembers that singular night in June when she told Calden to smash her Lexus into a Crinos Spiral and they spun out into a field by a lake and -
So. Outside.
The safety off her nine millimeter, the weapon still pointed at the ground. Tension electric riding the circuit of her spine, an alertness, an awareness about her tall frame as she takes in the scene; glances at Paul where he has been thrown on the ground and holds the weapon, two-handed, see? Like a fucking cop.
"They thought you were a coyote - " Éva is neither particularly brace nor especially foolish, but she is edging forward as if to cover Paul. Not with her body with the possible range of weapon's fire. Except for that brief glance at Paul, her eyes are on the Crinos now, though. " - attacking the herd. They brought you back to make sure you were okay.
"You understand what I'm saying, right? Shift down. We'll help you, or we'll get you help."
tenderfootHEY.
She flinches, snarling, whipping her head towards Calden. Instinct has her moving toward him a bit, paws lowering to the ground, claws digging into the earth. Those claws are not the size of Avery's claws, not the size of Hector's or Erich's, but they are just as lethal. She growls low, but flinches back again, the sound turning slightly into a whine.
Paul is picking himself up. He was thrown, that's true, but by a glabro no bigger than an average-sized woman... that is, not an average-sized pro body builder. He's picking himself up, bruised but not broken, even though he's favoring one shoulder. Probably dislocated. He has no weapon. He's hanging back as Eva steps forward, adding her voice to Calden's.
It was a mistake. They don't want to hurt her. They thought she was a coyote.
She growls at that. They tell her to shift down and the growl whines again, keening again, as she hunkers down, clawing aimlessly and anxiously at the ground, shaking like a dog might. Only she's not trying to shake water from her fur. She's trying to shake off something else. This body. Her own rage. Something else.
CaldenTo call this situation tense would be an understatement. The kin are not particularly brave nor particularly foolish. They are not invulnerable to fear, to the dreadful knowledge that as small, as lost, as uncertain as the Garou appears, she is a deadly thing and she could tear them to pieces in a flash. She was not, as she was for Jimmy and Paul, a quarter-mile away and unaware of their presence until they fired the fire shot. She's ten feet away. Twenty at best. It'd take her a single blink of an eye to get to them.
Two to tear them to pieces.
And yet for her, too: perhaps not a situation she feels entirely, or even a little, in control of. Hungry, hunting, and then suddenly shot at, shot down, piled into a car and hauled somewhere else and now,
now, her wounds still closing, she's surrounded and beset again. There are guns pointed at her again. Two of them.
And then --
one. Calden straightens from behind the truck. He raises his hands where the wolf can see him, and then he lets the rifle swing loose: muzzle to the sky, stock to the ground. "Okay," he says. "Okay. I'm going to put the gun down... if you'll shift down. Or at least sit. Okay?"
tenderfootShe whines. She edges back, spine to the wheelhouse of the truck, flicking her eyes back and forth.
It's possible that right now, she doesn't know that she could tear them to pieces before they got a shot off.
Éva"Paul," Éva's eyes do not leave the strange Garou, but there is a calm strength to her tone that belies the tension that must be evident in her body. "Get up and go inside. Let me know if you have trouble with the door."
The Shadow Lord is wearing hiking boots tonight, and the leather blazer over jeans and a silky blouse. The blazer is open and there is the hint of the shoulder holster that - yes - she apparently intended to wear to dinner evident beneath.
She is backlit and even as Calden reassures and promises to put his gun down, Éva makes no such promises. Nevertheless, the muzzle of the weapon is still pointed at the ground. Nevertheless, the safety is off. Could she pull it up and get off one shot, two, before she was taken down?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
-
"How old are you?" The strange beast's size is only now becoming clear to Éva. At first all she saw was monster. Now, with time and clarity: more. "My daughter's nine. I don't think you're much older, though I could be wrong.
"You're going to be okay. Alright? Everyone here is going to be just fine, and Calden and I are going to help you. If you can't get out of that skin, that's okay too. We can find someone to help you. Paul is going to go inside so he can call the Sept, okay? So we're going to let him go in. It might take a little while, but they'll be able to send someone to help you figure out what's going on.
"How does that sound?"
tenderfootPaul wants to stand his ground. He casts a look at Calden, but ballsy as he is, he's not an idiot. He moves for the door. In front of them, the cub -- there is almost doubt now that it is a cub, in fact -- snaps her vision to him, the thing moving, running, as instinct tells her to go after the Thing That Hurt Her. She doesn't see him much right now as the man who also hauled her into the bed of a truck and held his coat down over her gunshot wounds trying to staunch the flow of her blood. She was unconscious for most of that.
What she remembers is the world going white, and the surge of anger and pain coming from some hollow place up from inside her, wrenching her back into red and shadow and noise only to drop her like a stone into unconsciousness again. And none of that means anything to her.
Calden points his gun at the sky, Eva points hers at the ground. Neither of them are quite willing to set them aside yet.
How old are you.
My daughter's nine.
She's looking at Eva with those golden, searing eyes of hers. She's being told again that it's going to be okay. Even if
if you can't get out of that skin.
She whines. Loudly, achingly, clutching at the earth, whimpering. Because she can't, you see. She can't find her way out of this skin. She wants to talk, and answer, and she wants the pounding in her head to stop and she wants to stop wanting to kill everything that moves but she can't get out. The sounds she's making --
she keens like an animal. She is also, at once, in a strange and somewhat grotesque blend of noise, crying like a child,
curling up on the ground.
CaldenThere is a brief moment where Paul -- thoughtful, levelheaded Paul -- casts a look at Calden, which Calden returns with an ever so subtle nod of his head door-wise. And meanwhile before them there is a wolf, a wolf who is almost certainly a cub, and almost certainly trapped in this skin, who Eva bargains with in that no-nonsense, maternal way that makes Calden think of the deals she strikes with her own daughter.
How about you take a bath now while Mr. White is making dinner, and then tonight you can stay up half an hour later for hot cocoa and marshmallows? How does that sound?
The little crinos claws at the ground. She keens like an animal, and also like a child, and Calden, heart twisting even as it beats fast fast fast out of adrenaline and fear, lowers his rifle slowly and carefully to the bed of the truck. Slips the safety back on.
"Okay," he says again, coming around the bed of the truck now -- walking low to the ground, hands held out and open. "Okay, then. You'll be all right. Can you write? Can you use your claws to write your name for us?"
ÉvaAs Calden edges closer to the young Crinos, Éva thumbs the safety of her weapon back on. With the safety engaged, she allows herself to hold the weapon with a bit less care, a bit more casually. It is now pointed directly at the ground rather than at the ground but in the vague-direction-of-the-strange-Crinos and as Calden asks if the girl can write her name,
Éva nods a quiet encouragement.
"If you can, it'll help us. Maybe there's someone at the Sept who knows you. Maybe there's someone you want to come help."
tenderfootCalden is the first to put his gun down. To turn on the safety and just put it down. He moves, his hands empty, and this time she doesn't flinch away or growl. She just trembles, crying the way she does, curled away from them. But after a while she -- trembling, not with terror but with the effort to restrain her own rage -- reaches out and claws, very slowly, into the dirt, in tall and ragged letters;
J I L L
And beneath that, after a few more seconds:
1 1
It takes her longer, more control, to get the rest out:
N D A K O T A
CaldenCalden edges a little closer, and a little closer yet, to read what the wolf writes. The letters are ragged. There isn't much light. Still, he manages to make out the words. A name. An age. Home state.
"Hi, Jill," Calden says, lowering himself little-by-little to the ground. There's maybe six feet between him and the girl. "I'm Calden. This is my friend Eva. My cousins Paul and Jimmy were the ones that brought you here. They're real sorry to have hurt you, okay? They didn't mean to.
"We're all kind of like you. But not exactly. We can't change our shape like you can, but we have friends who can. They're going to come help you change back to a girl, and figure out what to do from there. All right?
"Is there someone who can call for you?"
Éva"Hi Jill." Quiet and sinuous and in the wake of Calden's greeting.
Éva does not edge closer. She does hide her wariness; the cutting edge of her fear and the other things that flare inside her with those very simple words. Jill. 11. NDAKOTA.
"I've been to North Dakota. Quite a bit recently? Our folks keep getting into trouble near Williston. Have you been there? You've come a really long way, all the way to Colorado, so you probably won't know any of the people we can call to come help you, but they'll be better able to help you than we can.
"Are you hungry? If you're hungry we can get you something to eat. It'll take a couple of hours for someone to get here, probably."
tenderfootShe's grunting a little from effort, or maybe pain, though by now every single gunshot has healed. It's a bit awful, to think of how much steel now lives in her body. Maybe someday she'll be hardcore, she'll dig it out with her claws or find a kinfolk surgeon. Is it worth it? That depends on her. But right now she is healing, whole, and there are used bullets stuck inside of her.
Calden slowly lets himself down to the ground. Even crouched, even though she's curled up still, her head is above his. Every few words she misses one, loses the thread of what he's saying, but she tries to follow.
The truth is, they both have the blood of their tribes. They smell like rain and earth to her, and it is intrinsically comforting. Something about Calden seems wholly trustworthy, even before he put his rifle down. But Eva has a daughter who is nine. Eva knew, somehow, that she wants to shift but can't, she doesn't know how yet, these things just happen.
She doesn't attack when Calden comes closer. She slumps slightly, whimpering. They're going to help her change back to a girl. But she shakes her head to both of them: no one to call. No, she's never been to Williston. Maybe she didn't know until now that she'd run all the way to Colorado.
Eva asks if she's hungry. And then Jill moves. She lurches slightly towards the kinswoman, then stops, now kneeling on the ground, hunched over, drawing her hand-paws up to her face. She just... starts crying. Bent forward, brow almost on her knees, she just starts sobbing,
as her fur begins to recede. As something other than rage or fear or instinct pulls her away from the brink, back towards them. Towards rain and earth, things like 'friend' and 'cousins' and 'daughter', towards adults who are going to take care of her.
It turns out that Jill is actually tall for her age. She's lanky and angular, with mid-length brown hair. There is a thin white streak in the locks. She's dirty. Her skin is fair but it's positively packed with mud and dirt and bloodstains. She's tiny compared to both of them now, crying so hard.
Éva"Come on, love." When Jill starts to cry, Éva at last puts her weapon away. Holsters it beneath her arm with only a small second thought and takes several half-steps forward, sinking to a low, crouch, the sort that humans often take with strange, distraught children and wary animals.
She is settled on her haunches, easily and thoughtlessly balanced and she half-stands and closes the distance to the girl as Jill slips into her girlskin.
"It's okay." A hand in Jill's filthy dark-brown hair, another on her shoulder, picking her up and turning her slowly and and steadily toward Éva's body. Murmuring, steady and quiet. "It's okay. It's okay. You did it, didn't you?
"We'll get you a bath, and some clean clothes, and a meal too. Calden was grilling steaks, but you can have anything you want. Popcorn or brownies or steak or a half-gallon of ice cream, the whole thing eaten straight with a spoon."
CaldenIt is okay. She did do it. And as Eva gathers the girl up, Calden shrugs out of his vest and folds it over Jill's narrow shoulders. Sideways, because it's so large for her now that it just about wraps around her like a blanket this way, warm still from being on Calden's body.
"Come on," he says quietly, a hand on Eva's shoulder, another rubbing slowly and comfortingly on the girl's back. "Let's go inside. It's warm and we have a fire."
They rise together: two adults and a girl-wolf. Two adults carrying a girl-wolf, who would in any other setting be too old to be carried like this. What was it Eva had called it? A pre-teen, and therefore automatically the opposite of anything an adult might think.
Calden leaves his gun in the bed of the truck. At some point he'll have to come out and re-rack it, keep it from the elements. Not now, though. Right now, he opens the front door of that large, warm, rustic home of his, which smells like the salad dressing Eva used and the smoke-and-char scent of half-cooked steaks and burgers.
Paul is still on the phone. Clutching it white-knuckled. It's only been a few minutes. "It's all right," Calden tells him. "Tell them they can come in the morning. Or we can drive her down. Her name's Jill. She's eleven, and she's from North Dakota."
tenderfootEva Illeshazy is nothing at all like Jill's mom. Jill's mom is in North Dakota. They are starting to wonder where their daughter is buried. It's been long enough that they should have gotten a ransom. They've been looking at everyone in the girl's life -- that's what you do when a child goes missing. Immediate family, extended family, family friends, teachers, coaches, people at church. Anyone and everyone who has access to the child, anyone and everyone who might be trusted enough that a child of age 11 would go willingly. Jill's mother and father, right now, are losing their minds. This is their nightmare.
Maybe if they knew that Calden and Eva were taking care of her, offering her popcorn or brownies or steak or ice cream, or anything she wants, they would pass out from sheer relief. Maybe one day they'll get to see her again, even if they can't know what she is. But Jill isn't thinking about that. She has no frame of reference for what her parents might be going through other than that one time she wasn't at the pick-up spot after soccer at the appointed time and her mom looked so pissed off, and she doesn't know that her mother's anger was actually panic.
All she really knows right now is that Eva is not like her mom at all, not with that leather blazer and that silky shirt and a gun, but there are common threads. The way she holds her, and pulls her in, and how she almost sounds proud of her for being able to make the change: you did it, didn't you? And the way she says bath, because moms do that, they always want you to be clean and they'll ask you if you washed your hands after you use the bathroom. Eva looks and feels and sounds and smells nothing like her own mom, but there is mothering there, and she sinks into it with ache and sorrow and desperate, desperate need; she has not had anyone mothering her for a long time now, and she is young enough that she needs it.
Calden does what dads do, even if he doesn't know it. He does what gentlemen do. He is out of that vest, which is going to be long on her, shearling-lined. He's going to make sure she's warm and she's covered up, because don't think for a second that Jill doesn't realize she's naked and there's a man right there, but he covers her up and rubs her back and when it's time for them all to get up, it's into Calden's arms that the girl goes. She's uncertain but that desperation is there, too: she is hiding from the world against the shoulder of someone stronger than her, someone who looks about as upset that she got hurt as she is.
They keep saying it's going to be okay. Neither of them have told her she did wrong. It's going to be okay.
Even if, god damn you Gaia, it's not ever going to be fair. She's eleven.
--
Inside, Paul is on the phone with one of the rangers from Forgotten Questions working a night shift. They've already got a guardian heading toward the ranger to talk to Eva and/or Calden. But Paul hesitates, and he nods, relaying what he does over the phone. When he hangs up, he looks at the girl, guilt and shame rocketing through his eyes. He shot a kid. He hasn't even told Calden yet about the one dead, two injured head of cattle out there on the pasture, not to mention how many are spooked beyond sanity, or how scared-angry the dogs were. Ian's got things under control now, but they still have a dead asset, two that might need to be shot,
none of which matters as much, right now, as the fact that he shot a kid.
He hangs up. He moves his eyes from Jill to Calden. "They said they're gonna send a couple of Guardians up here from Forgotten Questions. They won't barge in, but I think they want to stay nearby in case --"
his eyes flick at Jill, but he's conscious of her consciousness. He doesn't want to indicate that they're gonna be there, on the fringes of Calden's property, just in case this girl frenzies, just in case she loses control again. But the Guardians are wise, and the sept is old, and the White name is as known in these parts as the hospitality of Fianna is known all over the world: it will be better if they wait til morning. If they let the Fianna take care of her for tonight, feed her and house her and warm her and give her a safe place to rest, it will be better in the morning.
"I'm sorry," he says to the girl, to her back, because she is still slumped against Calden. "Jill --" he just learned her name. "I'm real sorry. I didn't know, I --"
She's tensing up, a soft sound in her exhale of breath that is almost a growl. She isn't looking at him. Paul backs off. He is still holding his shoulder. "I'm gonna see if Jimmy'll drive me out to the clinic," he says, a bit heavier. He excuses himself.
Jill relaxes again, inch by inch, saying quietly to Calden: "I wanna get down."
Calden"If they're sending Guardians," Calden says, "might as well invite them in. I'm not gonna have people sleeping out in the cold like beggars. We can set a couple cots up in the study, and let Jill have the spare room. I just think it'll be better if she can get a good night's sleep."
Before. That's the word that's unspoken, and so is the rest of it. Before they take her down south. Before they keep her all but locked away in a Caern, cut off from her family, cut off from the rest of the world, while she learns. While they teach her what she is, and what that means, and why she was chosen, and all the other heavy, terrible, awful things that no eleven-year-old should ever have to learn. That no one should ever have to learn.
That's tomorrow. That's the future. Tonight: what is merciful in Calden wants to make tonight hot baths and ice cream and steak and a warm, soft bed.
Paul hangs up. His eyes are full of guilt and shame. Calden looks at him with compassion, but without urging Jill to accept that half-spoken apology.
"Go on," he says quietly. "I'm sure Jimmy'll drive you. Tell Ellie everything's all right and her mom'll be there soon."
--
Jill relaxes. She wants to get down. So Calden lets her down, keeping that vest wrapped sideways around her for warmth and modesty both. "How about I find you an old t-shirt of mine," he offers, "that you can wear like a big old nightie until we find something better? And then you can eat something. I bet you're starving."
Because: why else would she go after the cattle?
Éva"You might take Ellie with you," to Paul. Éva's dark eyes are steady on him. She does not react to his guilt, and does not try to reassure him that all is alright. Not here and not now. Not in Jill's presence. "While we get Jill settled. If there's a line and it's taking a while I'll come down and pick her up."
--
"My daughter packed a dress for the weekend," Éva is telling Jill as they walk the girl back toward Calden's room to pick up one of his t-shirts. "You're taller than she is, but that shouldn't matter much with a dress, and I don't think that she will mind. Especially when she realizes we're all family.
"You can shower after dinner, and put on the dress then. Then you'll have it tomorrow to meet some more new people. That way you can feel like you look nice. If the dress doesn't work, we'll come up with something else. Okay?"
--
They do retrieve the t-shirt and then head back to the kitchen and by then Calden's cousins have loaded themselves into one of the trucks along with Ellie to head down to the clinic and Éva and Calden find themselves on the porch again, grilling steaks.
It hasn't been that long.
Their own dinner is forgotten. They pile food in front of Jill and watch her eat and do not finish the bottle of wine because there is a child in the house and she is a Garou and that would be foolish and they are not foolish.
After dinner: these familiar rituals. Bath and toothbrushing and Éva combing Jill's long hair carefully, to get the tangles out without making the girl cry.
And on and on. They put Jill to bed in a warm bed in her own room, which is far away from the room where Eva and her daughter are staying.
Oh the morrow, though -
tenderfootJill has no earthly idea what a guardian is. Only that they are, as Calden and Eva claim, people who can help her. And 'guardians' doesn't sound scary, though she'll learn later that they are in fact quite frightening in some ways. A good night's sleep sounds good to her, though.
So does a hot bath. So does eating.
Eva decides that Ellie should go to the clinic, too. They'll have Highlights there, and crayons. A bit young for a nine-year-old but safer than being here, right now. Eva makes these decisions because she's the one in charge of Ellie's safety, Ellie's sanity. She trusts Jimmy and Paul. They'll get fresh shirts. They'll drive out to the rural clinic, get someone working the night shift to pop Paul's shoulder back into place. They aren't the types who will demand X-rays; this is the nature of living where they do.
It's Eva who will help Jill get changed into something more covering. Eva who will sit with her while she devours a whole steak and a burger and then, yes, some ice cream and maybe something salty like chips or popcorn. Eva who will make sure she has towels and so on and a fresh shirt to change into for bed after she takes a very long, very hot shower, who tells her not to scrub too hard at her skin to get the blood off, it'll come off, just be patient. Calden will make sure they find a nail brush so she can get the grime out from under her fingernails, too.
Calden will set up the cots and the spare room, waffling over a nightlight before he decides to plug one in and turn it on. Calden who finds a spare toothbrush for Jill, and Eva who combs her hair out after her bath while the girl sits silently, exhausted and well-fed and still terrified and sullen and very, very sad. It might be one of them, or both of them, who sit with her or stay nearby while she falls asleep. Calden who greets the guardians and tells them the cub is asleep, shows them where they can stay, offers them the same: hot showers, food, the hospitality they give because
they are all family, here.
No one sleeps very easily tonight. Not even Jill, who wakes at one point crying, muffling her sounds in her pillow, reciting to herself her house's phone number even though she knows she's not going to sneak out and call it. Jimmy and Paul come back, Paul in a temporary sling, Ellie asleep between them in the cab of the truck, Jimmy carrying her in to her mother. He admits they stopped at got burgers at some all-night drive-through. Says they let her get a small milkshake, too. Sounds very much like they were trying to make it up to her that the night didn't go as planned. Sounds a bit like they were trying to make it up to Jill, via Ellie.
Ellie is told quietly, half-awake between truck and bed with her mom for their sleepover-at-Calden's, that this other girl doesn't have any clothes of her own, and no: she doesn't mind. Not enough to argue. Ellie is not as young as most children her age are. Ellie is also a Shadow Lord, with the sharp eyes and keen mind that mark their tribe as much as warm hearts and open arms mark the Fianna.
--
In the morning, Jill is one of the last to wake. There's a dress for her to change into, which is not terribly girly, and two people who are not even remotely, slightly afraid of her sitting down with her in one of Calden's big rooms to start explaining to her
what she is,
and how she came to be.
